Conservation Council of New Brunswick forest program director, Tracy Glynn, was featured in a Radio Canada International (RCI) story published on August 21st, on renewed calls to end the herbicide spraying in public forests in New Brunswick.
“When we look around at our neighbours, Quebec banned herbicide spraying of its public forests in 2001, and it’s well overdue that the government get into 21st century forest management that is ecologically and socially responsible,” Glynn told RCI.
For years, the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, along with other environmental organizations, have been calling for an end to the use of herbicide spraying in the province on account of the negative effect it has on food supplies for deer and moose, and scientific evidence showing there may be possible toxic affects on animals and humans.
Glynn says, “Old spruce and fir stands and beautiful maple and birch ridges have been clear-cut, doused with herbicides and replaced with tree farms. Herbicides kill broad leaf trees, shrubs and grasses destroying the food source and habitats of many species found in our forest.”
“We are fighting nature, and it’s ludicrous,” said Rodney Severidge, a biologist at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton.
Read the full story here.
Quick Facts:
- Québec banned herbicide use in its forests in 2001 due to public concern over human health impacts of spraying. Vermont, which has a similar forest type to New Brunswick, also stopped using herbicides in their forests, almost two decades ago, in 1997.
- NB farmers use less glyphosate on average, than those in other provinces, primarily due to the fact that NB grows fewer bushels of genetically modified corn and soybeans.
For more information:
- Read the Conservation Council’s statement in response to a report released by the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health on glyphosate, here.
- To see where NB forest will be sprayed this summer, click here.
- NB’s Auditor General recommended in her 2015 reportthat public forests should be managed for economic, environmental and social values, and highlighted that the province has lost money from the management of public forests for at least the last five years.